Sometimes It’s the Little Things
When Alejandro Bustamante became president of Plantronics Mexico some years ago, he inherited, among other problems, a dispirited workforce with dysfunctionally high employee turnover. Nobody wanted to work there. Charged with turning around the plant, which makes telephone headsets and other communications gear, Alejandro knew he could do nothing to change the people working in […]
What Do You Mean, Contented Cows?
If you’ve been following our work over the last 20 years or so, you could skip this post (but please don’t). You know what the reference to Contented Cows is all about, and therefore our reason for titling this blog “Daily Dairy”. But keep reading. A refresher never hurts. However, if you’re new to Contented Cows, and a lot of […]
What to do if Politics are Taking a Toll on Your Workplace Productivity
This week, I contributed to a piece Noreen Seebacher @writeNoreen wrote for CMS Wire about steps managers should take to deal with the continuing decline in productivity owing to U.S. election-related politics and governmental affairs distractions in the workspace. Here’s a link: http://www.cmswire.com/digital-workplace/politics-are-taking-a-toll-on-workplace-productivity-heres-what-to-do/ If you find it worthy, I’m sure Noreen and CMS Wire won’t mind if you give […]
The ONE Thing that Builds Employee Engagement More than Anything Else
A young(ish) audience member came up to me at a conference I was set to speak at last year, and said, (I’m paraphrasing throughout, but not much) “Richard, I’ve read the conference program, and I see that you’re going to be speaking on Employee Engagement later today. What’s the one thing – the ONE thing,” he […]
Growing Pains – How do I Fit in Around Here?
“If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.” – Steve Jobs People involved in the work of any organization, large, small, or somewhere in between, need to know how they fit in with the purpose of the enterprise. This doesn’t get any easier […]
It’s Not About the Phones
If I hear this question one more time… I won’t be surprised. “How do we get these people to get off their phones and get their work done?” First point: it’s not about the phones. The phones are irrelevant. They simply represent yet another distraction, and, let’s be honest, a tool which most of us (irrespective […]
Sometimes Leaders Have to Put it All on the Line
In the late 1980’s I left a very good job because I refused to follow a direct order that, though legal, was contrary to both policy and practice of the organization. Moreover, carrying it out would have materially harmed the livelihood and careers of some good people for no good reason. I certainly didn’t take […]
Workplace Productivity in the Post-Inauguration Period
Psst! Psst! Yeah, you. Look around. Listen. What do you hear? Does your workplace look and sound like it usually does? I bet it doesn’t. Odds are that more people than usual are paying attention to news portals, be it television, radio, social media, or other digital news outlets. I’ll venture too that there is […]
To Raise Productivity, Stop Putting Lipstick on Pigs
Despite unprecedented increase in the amount of digital labor-saving technology applied to our commercial processes, the U.S. rate of productivity growth has effectively been sawed in half over the last decade. You heard that right, microchips and poor productivity in the same sentence. Federal Reserve Board Chairwoman Janet Yellen has declared this trend “a key uncertainty for the U.S. […]
Less Selfies, More Ussies
As a leadership coach, I work with managers up and down the ladder, helping them refine and capitalize on their strengths, discover hidden (to them) weaknesses, and rehab or minimize the impact of the latter. In a world that seems bent on becoming more inwardly-focused, where everyone is running for their next gig, one thing that […]